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About Michael J. Miller

Miller, who was editor-in-chief of PC Magazine from 1991 to 2005, authors this blog for PC Magazine to share his thoughts on PC-related products. No investment advice is offered in this blog. All duties are disclaimed. Miller works separately for a private investment firm which may at any time invest in companies whose products are discussed in this blog, and no disclosure of securities transactions will be made.

3D Without Glasses: A Work in Progress

Given all the 3D hype lately, one of the things I wanted to see at the SID show this week were displays that did 3D without special glasses. There are a number of different "autostereoscopic" solutions out there, at various stages of development. Some smaller displays are expected to be on the market soon (including an upcoming handheld gaming device from Nintendo), and larger displays are becoming available for the digital signage market.

As for such displays replacing polarized glasses for watching TV at home or in theaters, though, it's still very much a work in progress. Most people I talked to think this is more than five years away.

But there were also a number of bigger displays. LG Display has an
interesting 47-in 3D display that was notable for its brightness or high
luminance. You need to stand in the right location or you'll see a
blurred image, but from the right angle, it looked good.

More after the jump.

One of the best demos I saw was from 3M optical systems, which showed 3D working on both 3-in and 9-inch displays. This uses a 120-Hz LCD panel and delivers the 3D by flickering the backlight, so if you're centered on the display at the right distance, you see a 3D image, and if you're off-center, you see a 2D image. It's a different approach than some I've seen, and looked quite reasonable on a small display. The 3-inch version is designed to be viewed from 285mm away, and the 9-in one is currently designed to be viewed from about 750mm away (which makes sense for a photo frame; and the company says it can do a version more aimed at the slate market). What 3M sells is films that are part of the manufacturing process; and the films they showed this year (which should be in 2011 products)

Samsung had a 52-in autosteroscopic display that uses a lenticular lens, to produce a reasonable image in 3D, and was notable for displaying 3D at a larger viewing angle of about 70 degrees (better than the other autosteroscopic solutions I've seen, but nowhere near what normal TV works). In 3D mode, it's 640 by 360, so it's not really high resolution, but seemed brighter than most of the glasses-free solutions I've seen.

But perhaps the most interesting was Samsung's "Virtual Holographic Display," which uses a transparent panel to project an image that looks as if it is floating on top of real items. It's still a long way off, but very cool.

I wish I could say I thought glasses-free 3D TVs were around the corner, but based on the demos here they still look to be a long way off. We will see smaller displays in products this year; and I'll be curious to know whether this turns out to be a compelling feature.

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